Aspiring Photographers are Quitting Instagram en Masse and Here's Why

Full disclaimer: the title is a total clickbait. Still I’m very concerned about
the current state of Instagram and the direction the site has taken. Here are
some of my grievances:

I haven't seen anyone but bots in a while. Sure, that's a gross
exaggeration, but it certainly feels like actual people are in the minority
on the site. Most accounts that like or follow me are
spambots or some low-tier SMM guys from developing world.

My major grievance is lack of posting in official API. Sure, there are unofficial private API wrappers, but why should users jump through the hoops? Limiting access to CRUD operations in public API is walled garden approach at its finest.

No links. Instagram prohibits adding clickable links and copying in both descriptions and comments. I understand they're doing it to minimize spam, but it's like getting rid of intestines to avoid diarrhea. Also, see the first point. How much should it take before ineffectiveness of this approach is evident? In the meanwhile there is no way for the regular user to share a link to a bigger story.

It doesn't cater towards its original target audience - the amateur photographers. Instagram is no longer a network for good phone photography (or attempts at that), most pics one sees today are selfies, which says a lot about the current target audience of the service. Introduction of Stories (which is 100% Snapchat rip-off) cemented this trend.

I’m still using the service for sharing what I deem interesting shots and occasional videos, but I’m also using Flickr as some kind of mirror feed and to be honest Instagram starts to feel like dead weight.